Just picked up a TSPP on loan and would like to use it in league. Are there preferred settings for competitive play? Is there a preset for hard or extra hard play. I’m not seeing it in the menus. TIA.
Other than turning off EB’s, having it on tournament mode and/or making lighting lock harder, there’s not much else you can do with settings. Biggest concern is long ball times. If possible, remove the left outlane post completely. Making it steep may help but depending on the caliber of player you have in your league, you may need to play two ball games. Two ball games are a good way to get long ball games into league. Adds a interesting strategy wrinkle too.
One other thing you could try is to slather the playfield with several coats of wax, then buff the hell out of the balls. Swearing will definitely increase, but ball times should drop. If you go this route, I wouldn’t recommend a tight tilt.
Depending on how brutal you want to go:
- adjust right outlane so you can’t nudge ball into shooter lane
- remove right in/outlane rubber.
- tighten slings
- put new extra bouncy red rubber on flippers
I support brutality.
Lightning flippers!!!
might go with SC flippers instead
Brutal indeed
Long ball times? The Simpsons Pinball Party has had one of the shortest ball times of any machine I’ve played. But perhaps those broken upper flippers I mentioned might have something to do with it.
I would make it less steep. With wide outlanes, slings will mess you up on this game.
You may be right. I had a nice one for a few years and I don’t think I ever brought it to CAX. I do remember asking on RGP ocho a few years ago about the best settings for the right outlane posts. No one offered any tips. I just looked on the PAPA site and they don’t have anything specific on the game either. As fun as the game is, I don’t think it’s a good game for a big tourney. I’m definitely down with 2 ball games in league though.
I ended up trading my TSPP for a Ripley’s and a EATPM. Sadly, the TSPP is now in the game room at FB headquarters.
Why not just make it a 1-ball game where you can’t touch the flippers? That’ll really cut down on your ball times.
Sarcasm aside, if you can’t play a proper game, then maybe it’s not a good candidate for league play at all. Everyone expects 3 balls when playing a game of pinball, so I’d suggest just about anything other than changing that. Take out the outlane posts, tighten the tilt, etc.
With many leagues increasing in size the last couple of years, it’s often hard to find locations with enough games to get 40+ players through in a couple of hours. Not using games makes it take that much longer for everyone to play their games.
And if you’ve never played a 2 ball game in league, believe me when I say it will make you think about strategy beforehand. Even folks that attend league 100% for socializing will think before they step up to a 2 ball game. I like that.
One other consideration is that not playing full games might disqualify the league from being eligible for WPPRs, if that’s something you care about. I know that the grading process doesn’t consider 1-ball games, not sure about 2-ball.
I’m going to keep it on 3 ball. We only play 5 games and we are capped at 20 players so it can only take so long. No ball save and no EBs is as much as I can limit. I’ll just set it extra hard
Two balls on a factory TSPP is going to take longer than 3 balls on a factory BSD or IM. Many leagues don’t play EB’s. Are we going to start docking them points for that too?
I wouldn’t recommend that. That will just make it extremely hard to start anything and people won’t enjoy playing the game. I would suggest just making couch locks harder in feature settings.
Straight from our WPPR rules:
“The TGP only considers games of 3 or more balls in the game count, with the exception of the Pin-Golf format where players can possibly hit their target score in fewer than 3 balls.”
You CAN play games less than 3 ballsx it simply won’t count towards TGP.
We have some changes (of course) for the WPPR system for 2016 but this won’t be one of them.
Wait, are you saying that The Simpsons Pinball Party normally has ball saves? Of the 25+ Simpsons Pinball Parties I’ve played, only one had any ball saves (besides the three-switch thing), and that was in such dilapidated condition that it felt like it was there to make the game feel playable. I have had literally games that ended in less than 30 seconds, end-of-ball bonus time included.
I honestly don’t know. I did just play two games with an average of 26 minutes a game. Not sure we can spend 10hrs playing on a Tuesday night so TSPP may have to sit out league night.
Some TSPPs seem to play forever, and others play really, really hard. Did you make the physical adjustments suggested upthread? (Outlane posts/flipper rubber/wax?)
I think the ‘random’ thing that matters a lot is the return off the garage or missed shots to the kicker. If it’s consistently easy to catch, ball times might be long…
Factory default on TSPP is no ball save.